Arizona Commissioner Admonished for Seeking Misconduct Probe at Ethics Workshop

of some of these things that have been going on in this commission that have put a really dark mark on this commission.” Burns commented after the commission’s legal counsel admonished the commissioner for bringing up controversial resignations of two top ACC officials, as Burns also did at the commission’s first ethics workshop (see 1708310046). Burns said the commission should investigate “misbehavior” by commissioners, including alleged misconduct involving the resignations: “There’s been some misconduct committed by commissioners and I’m concerned that it hasn’t been addressed and it hasn’t been investigated.” Chairman Tom Forese reacted, “If you choose to go down the direction of going into past issues … there’s a nice long list for Commissioner Burns going back to 2011.” Commissioner Boyd Dunn, ethics committee chair, said he doesn’t want history and political differences to distract the committee from moving forward: “I don’t want to get off track of coming up with a code of ethics -- that I think will be the best code of ethics of any commission in this country -- that will define what we expect from every commissioner.” Having a code, and someone on staff to explain rules to commissioners and lobbyists, would reduce overcautiousness, Dunn said. Transparency efforts should focus on areas that can make the biggest difference, Forese said. “The goal is … to find where is the attempt of influence.” Disclosure is important, but rules mustn’t tie commissioners’ hands at useful conferences such as NARUC, Commissioner Andy Tobin said. “When you talk about registering the cup of coffee, I just think there’s bigger pieces of this equation.”